spamex running on auto-pilot?

[ojos]

The Spamex disposable email is still working for me but for several months I get the impression that it has been working on auto-pilot. For one thing, News hasn't been updated on their website for around 7 years. Then their forums on http://forums.spamex.com haven't been accessible for many months. Spamex has been a great system for me and I'd hate it if they went down the drain.

[sflorack]

Think you're right. My subscription expired nearly 2 years ago, but I receive all email as though they forgot to turn me off (not complaining).

[lslonim]

same here, I love the service, but the credit card expired and they didn't contact me at all. I just happened to check it and updated the card. Don't know if they actually charged me. I'd hate to lose Spamex.

[Spamex]

The forums unfortunately was running on autopilot for years and we lost it when the database corrupted and the person who had set it up was long gone so we just removed the link from the website.

As for charging, we have had a long standing problem with the script that renews peoples accounts where some notifications were not going out and people were getting shut down without notice, so we disabled the shutdowns. We have been catching up with people and getting them to bring their accounts current. If you KNOW that your account is expired, we would certainly appreciate if you would issue a payment. We will be notifiying you shortly that the account needs to be caught up anyway.

Spamex is still here and viable. Please feel free to sign up for a free 30 day trial account and test us out and see what you think.

Regards,
Spamex Support

[Davidsmith]

Now that Emailias has gone, I am on the 30 day trial of spamex, hopefully it will be a worthy replacement.

[darcar]

I've been using Spamex for a few years and I thought I might be getting close to my renewal date so I looked it up under "Service Level". (Never received a renewal email, but I didn't in past years either.) Sure enough, it had expired a few days earlier and there was a message that my account would be disabled in 5 days. I tried to pay, but kept getting a "Error Charging Credit Card" message. I tried more than one card, but the result was the same. Also, I've used these cards before and after my Spamex attempts and they are fine.

I've emailed Spamex support and left two messages on their answering machine, but nobody has responded yet. Now it shows my account will be disabled in 3 days. I'm willing to pay, but have no secure way to do it.

On November 12, 2010 the representative from Spamex posted here that they disabled the shutdowns. I'm hoping that's still the case, but I don't want to count on that. If you're out there, Mr. Spamex, please keep the shutdowns disabled or fix your payment system.

[DeeJayMI]

Today, I experienced the identical "payment" issue described by darcar (see below). In order to renew my expired Spamex account, I made two attempts to submit payment; both of these attempts failed, triggering an "Error Charging Credit Card" message. Hopefully Spamex will correct this glitch on their server soon!

Originally Posted by darcar

I've been using Spamex for a few years and I thought I might be getting close to my renewal date so I looked it up under "Service Level". (Never received a renewal email, but I didn't in past years either.) Sure enough, it had expired a few days earlier and there was a message that my account would be disabled in 5 days. I tried to pay, but kept getting a "Error Charging Credit Card" message. I tried more than one card, but the result was the same. Also, I've used these cards before and after my Spamex attempts and they are fine.

[classic101]

8 year vet of spamex. Same CC processing error repeatedly. Emaile X2, Phone message X2. No response. account expires today.

Read previous SPAMEX post encouraging users to keep acct current but it offers no way to do so if online processing isn't working and they aren't responsive to contact by phone or email to support.

Noted you can fax renewal or mail w/ postal money order. Has anyone tried these? May consider these options but I wish Spamex would clearly identify preferred means of renewal if online isn't working rather than just noting problem.

[nbarr]

My spamex account was set to expire in about two weeks. So I tried to renew it and was able to do so successfully today.
Hope the others in this thread that were having trouble renewing, were able to do so as well.

[TooCrooked]

for the life of me, i can't find the email they sent me talking about this.. can someone please quote it to this thread for posterity?

it may be hard to believe, but i live and die by this service. that being said, i relied on their notifications about the service being terminated. my account has been expired since 5 March 2009.

By the way, i was able to upgrade my account right as i was composing this post (now it's only expired since 5 march 2010!). the only problem is, when i tried to do it another two times to bring it completely up to date, i got the following error:

There was an error charging your card: SGS-005005: Duplicate transaction

i called my bank and they said they didn't see the declines, so it must be an issue between spamex and whoever processes credit cards for them.

ugh.

[ojos]

Originally Posted by TooCrooked

for the life of me, i can't find the email they sent me talking about this.. can someone please quote it to this thread for posterity?.

The mail said that you mustn't lose it ! It also said that you should only submit an upgrade (renewal) payment once in any 24 hour period else you will get failures. So that if you have to pay subscriptions for say 3 years (to include past years' unpaid amounts) then you must do it over 3 separate days.

Clearly you tried to rush 3 payments through in a single day and so it rejected the follow-up ones. I suggest you try the second one at least a day after the first and similarly for the third.

[TooCrooked]

Originally Posted by ojos

The mail said that you mustn't lose it !

what a useless post! instead of paraphrasing (and getting it wrong like in the case of rejected payments), you could have just posted the actual email to help others! is it that hard to be helpful instead wasting your and my time by writing up a useless, factually incorrect post like yours??

Originally Posted by this is how to NOT make a useless post!

Subject:
Your Spamex Subscription has expired (2nd notice)
From:
Spamex Support <support@spamex.com>
Date:
Mon, 9 May 2011 18:47:09 -0400
To:
<me>

Dear Spamex Subscriber,

You are receiving this email because you have a paid subscription to the Spamex Disposable Email Address Service and your subscription has expired.

You may (or may not) have noticed that you have not been asked to renew your subscription to Spamex for some time. This is due to a bug in the process that emails our subscription renewal notifications and subsequently disables those accounts that have expired. The bug has resulted in a small number of accounts, including yours, to continue to operate normally; long after the subscription has expired. Please note that we did continue to provide service, we just fell behind in billing for that service.

We have resolved the bug and will be deploying the fix on May 15th, 2011 (that is 6 days from today). Any accounts with expired subscriptions will be automatically disabled at this time. If you are still using Spamex, please follow the instructions below to login to your account and renew your subscription so that your service is not interrupted. If you have already renewed in response to the first notice that we sent out and you are wondering why you are again receiving this email; your account may have expired more than a year ago and may need to be renewed more than once to bring it current.

So, what do you need to do? Well, if you are no longer using Spamex, just ignore these messages and your account will be automatically disabled and you should never hear from us again after May 15.

If you are still using Spamex (which of course you are), the first thing you should do is wonder whether this email is a phish; an attempt to get your information by someone other than spamex. It's not. How can we prove it? We will not ask you to click on anything. Instead, please login to your Spamex account (you know the url), click on "Profile", then "Service Level" and then "Upgrade Account", which will provide you with the ability to renew your subscription for one year and provide us with your current payment information. Note that the "Service Level" page will also show you the date on which your account expired.

If you are more than one year behind, you will need to renew your account multiple times. You can do this manually (you will need to wait 15 minutes between renewals or our merchant bank will reject the transaction as a duplicate), or click the "auto-renew" check-box, and our nightly renewal process will renew you for one year each night until your account is current. We realize that asking you to renew multiple times is a little inconvenient, and apologize for that in advance.

Please DO NOT choose a higher your level of service when you renew your account or you will be charged for the renewal at the wrong service level. If you would like to choose a different Servce Level, please renew your account until it is current, then upgrade to a new service level and you will only be charged the prorated amount for the current year.

Thank you for your continued support.

Justin Greene, President, The Spamex Disposable Email Address Service

parting shots:

Originally Posted by ojos

Clearly you tried to rush 3 payments through in a single day and so it rejected the follow-up ones. I suggest you try the second one at least a day after the first and similarly for the third.

clearly, you were wrong. clearly, you should have just posted the email and let it do the talking instead of putting your feet in your mouth. clearly, you are unhelpful!

[faldringham]

Spamex is or was running on autopilot for more than a year.
I had been a relatively satisfied user for 6+ years, as there were so few alternatives that provided similar features. The user interface was pretty clunky, and I had a number of other minor gripes, but for the price, it was a reasonably useful service.

However, I eventually just got fed up with the lack of customer support and the billing issues and canceled.

The circular links (spamex = clicvu), mentioned above, were particularly annoying.

So now I am looking for a service that offers a large number of disposable addresses or aliases, but improves on spamex in terms of customer support, the user interface, and greater attention to issues of security and privacy.

[sflorack]

The last straw for me was their recent email, and the absolute realization that they have abandoned the service 5-6 years ago; returning only to collect subscription fee's. I'm suppose to trust a company handling my email when they don't even notice something as important as receiving payment from me since 2008?

I emailed Spamex support to express my opinion regarding the above quoted email they sent; it's been 11 days, and no reply. In terms of email support, that's an eternity, IMHO. They will drop in occasionally (on their now-defunct forums, or here) simply to provide the illusion that there is something alive pulling the strings of the puppet.

While I used to use the service religiously, I've since moved on to using my own domain with suffixing. I find that this fits my needs nicely.

Originally Posted by sflorack

While I used to use the service religiously, I've since moved on to using my own domain with suffixing. I find that this fits my needs nicely.

First question: What is domain suffixing and how does it work?

Second question: Are there any Spamex alternatives out there?